2012-2013 General Catalog

The UCSC General Catalog is no longer printed. We have the 2010-2012 (through Spring 2012) at the desk, and previous catalogs in the Ref Desk stacks to the right of the desk as you face it (call# LD781.S5 U56a). You can access the current catalog here:

http://registrar.ucsc.edu/catalog/

It has linked PDFs for each department.

Referral guide

FOR BOTH McHENRY AND SCIENCE & ENGINEERING REFERRALS
(AND DON'T FORGET TO RECORD STATISTICS!)

Hi everyone,

Here is the updated referral guide (as of 2/3/12).

Please post wherever it would be most visible and helpful to those using it.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Laura

Ref College/Career books

If patrons happen to ask about Ref books with a location of COLLEGE CAREER, you can find them in the work area next to the 2nd floor kitchen. The books are on a truck being reviewed and SOON the location COLLEGE CAREER will disappear. As it is now, the books are in the catalog with the location COLLEGE CAREER and can't be found unless you're in the know. And now you are.

-Sue Stoebner

New Gifts Coordinator

As of today, June 13, I will be the contact person for gifts to the Library collection (except gifts to Special Collections).

We are changing our procedures regarding the form called "Letter of Gift -- Gifts in Kind" so that these are given out only by me. If you are in charge of a Service Desk, please recycle any copies of that form that you may have.

Our simplified instructions for staff regarding gift materials are:

• Please refer all questions about possible donations of materials to me.
  
  
• If a patron comes to a service desk with a * small number * of items to donate:
  1. You may accept the gift, and pass it on to me.
  2. Please do not give them a Letter of Gift Form; if they wish one at that time they must speak to me first. If I am not available, they can leave the materials along with their contact information and I will contact them regarding paperwork.
  3. Please do not promise that the materials will be added to the collection. Please do not promise that if materials are NOT added to the collection, they will be returned to them. Materials left with the Library are disposed of in a manner that best benefits the Library.

• If a patron comes to a service desk with more than a box of materials, please tell them you cannot accept them and try to reach me so that I can evaluate the offered materials.

Best,
Kerry

BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill resource

In case people are still getting questions about the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, I wanted to let you know that we recently received the official report to the president: Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling (http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b3539867~S5) and the accompanying recommendations (http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b3539868~S5).

I also wanted to share this Deepwater subject guide created by the Gov Docs librarian at MSU: http://guides.library.msstate.edu/content.php?pid=136282&sid=1167503

And a reminder about the bibliography link that Cynthia sent out back in May:
http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/govdocs/gd/oilspill2010.html

--Jess

Placing holds on Reserves material

A question that comes up often at the desk and on Ask A Librarian is how can a patron place a hold ahead of time on a book that is on Reserve. A patron can place a hold up to a day in advance on a Reserve item, but only in person. They can also take a Reserve item out overnight if they place a hold 2.5 hours before we close in person (so for example 9:30pm for M-Th) and then it has to be back 1 hour after we open the next day.

New music research guide

Many thanks to Paul Machlis for his new guide, How to Find Music in the Library.

It's a great review for helping patrons find music sources on the desk.

October 18th-22nd desk schedule

Hi Deskers,

Next week's schedule has been posted on the staff portal page. We do not yet have a link on the main page, but I have submitted a request to WIT. In the meantime, login to the portal and then do a search in the top box for "reference". The schedule page will be the first link you see.

I will still distribute a paper copy to those who have asked for one.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

Laura

Rodent problem update on 2nd floor

The custodians are working to clean up the rodent mess. Most of the affected sections have been cleaned in the Ref stacks, but there are still some areas that need attention. The sections that need to cleaned still have the small, discreet signs attached. The signs are being removed once the cleaning is completed.

There are two compact shelving sections next to each other in the Ref Z's that have extensive droppings that need to be cleaned. The handles for these sections are tied together to prevent patrons from opening them. This section is in the middle section of compact shelving, and not visible from the InfoCommons.

If you encounter a patron who needs material from this section over the weekend, please let them know the items need to be cleaned and they should be available Monday morning.

Please stay vigilant for signs of rodents when you are in the stacks. Preservation is placing yellow streamers in books that need cleaning. Notify Preservation if you notice more signs of rodent damage. Of course, Preservation would be grateful if you would place streamers in books that need attention. More of these streamers are at the Ref desk, in the cubby under the 3rd Mac.

thank you,

Lucia

Monday, October 4th: CLA Snapshot Day

Hi Deskers,

Monday, October 4th is CLA's Snapshot Day and UCSC is participating. The impact for the Ref Desk is the way we tally statistics. We won't do a separate tally form for this. Instead, we will ask staff to record the number of questions within a transaction in the narrative box (for example, if you verify 3 citations, that's 3 questions, not the single long or short question we normally count, etc.). So go ahead and log your question as directional, short, or lengthy but also include the extra transaction information in the narrative box.

If you have questions, please ask Laura or Lucia.

Thanks, Laura

Oversized paper for music students

Many music scores are not regular sized and reducing them makes them too small to read. So we have in the cabinet just under the right desk Mac (looking from the desk), some 11" x 14" and 11" x 17" paper. Feel free to give some to students who ask for it. They can use it in the bypass trays on the copier. The bypass tray is a little drop-down tray on the right side of each copier. Please let Laura know if you have any questions.

Fall desk shifts begin tomorrow

Hello Deskers,

Fall desk shifts begin tomorrow, Thursday, September 23rd. I have posted the master schedule on the internal page (http://internal.library.ucsc.edu/ref/schedule/). This schedule will be migrating very soon to the new staff portal, and I'll send out a message when that happens. I am also updating materials at the desk, so please let me know if you notice something I've missed that is out-of-date. And don't forget to log your questions on SurveyMonkey. The link is still on the Firefox browser on the desk computers.

We've reduced the handouts kiosk to one, and moved it by the pillar closer to the InfoCommons. There are fall hours fliers, and an updated "Top 10 things" flier. I've seen groups of students come in and take them, so please let me know if you see them out of stock. I'm keeping an eye on them too.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

Laura

(corrected) Reference Desk Transactions Report, Summer Sessions 2010

During the two summer sessions of 2010 (21^st June–27^th August), the McHenry Library Reference Desk was open for four hours per day, Monday through Friday, from 1 till 5pm. This tallies to a total of twenty hours per week, or 200 hours for the entire ten-week period. In that period, 387 desk transactions were logged by Reference staff in SurveyMonkey (of which 379 included explanatory remarks). Since Reference staff have been logging desk queries through SurveyMonkey (from March 2010), 2501 transactions have been recorded:

March (includes Spring Break week)—144

April—685
May—927
June (prior to Summer Session)—738

The distribution of queries shows that the 1–2pm hour is most popular with 31.3 percent (121) of transactions, descending with each subsequent hour: 27.4 percent (106) from 2–3pm; 19.6 percent (76) from 3–4pm; and 19.4 percent (75) from 4–5pm. Additionally, 2.3 percent (9) of the questions were recorded at times when desk service was not available. While the majority of transactions were under five minutes (55.3% or 214), 29.2 percent (113) were five minutes or longer; directional questions were only 15.5 percent (60) of the total. Just over 3 percent (76) of the total came to us via telephone, and 2 percent (52) were printing or computing questions. (These transactions do not include off-desk, Ask A Librarian/QuestionPoint, or personal e-mail enquiries.)


Transaction Highlights

• Helped [emeritus librarian] determine the signature on an 1860 original letter he was transcribing from the Hihn-Younger Archive
• Recent UCSC graduate: advice on applying to master's degree v. doctoral programmes in pursuit of teaching at community-college level; Web site for faculty postings at California community colleges
• Emeritus-faculty proxy needed help with databases; also said that he has always received great service from our desk, and how much he appreciated that
• Assisted two lecturers working on a project which required analyzing the table of contents and physical layout/arrangement of a few journals. We only had electronic access to the journals they needed…. I suggested they contact an ENVS professor who I knew once used to edit the journal to see if he had a personal print subscription.
• Patron looking for data sets related to education from the perspective of population, transportation, health, environment, etc. Showed him ICPSR, several federal gov. sites, Rand California and our statistics guide. Also gave him contact info for [local ICPSR rep] and Lucia
• Books, articles, primary documents on Wilder Ranch, its history, and the Ohlone who lived in the area > extensive searching for, variously, Wilder Ranch, Rancho Refugio, Ohlone, Awaswas tribelet in local history titles in Reference Area, Cruzcat, SCPL, America: History & Life + advice on general Spain>Mexico>US California history and land grants
• Graduate student had ILL request for microfilm from New York State Archives denied as 'no lending library' although NYSA site states desired items 'available through ILL' > contacted our ILL, who will contact NYSA directly to enquire about item + found microfilm purchasing information on NYSA site to offer patron alternative if ILL unsuccessful
• 1970s-80s index for Santa Cruz Sentinel? > no such, but showed patron how to use SCPL Newspaper Clippings file along with microfilm
• Community member: reliable Web information/advice on home foreclosure options and alternatives > found relevant pages at HUD, FDIC, California Department of Real Estate
• UCSC staff member who is also a Cabrillo summer student needed help finding an expert from UCSC on global warming to interview for a project. Helped him find several names and printed contact info, primarily [Earth & Planetary Sciences faculty] who spoke on the topic for Synergy
• Historical information about the invention of the washing machine - found one book in Ref and several in stacks. Also wanted advertisements from different decades. Gave her call no. for All-American Ads by decades.
• Tutorial on finding popular articles reporting new scientific research then finding scholarly studies on which articles are based > New York Times and Academic Search Complete, then PubMed and PsycINFO
• [Community researcher] needed help finding and accessing a document on land use from 1878. It's an online document that Hastings owns in their Making of Modern Law database. He'll have to visit Hastings to access it. Also spent time telling him how to best approach access to these documents, when to use Cruzcat, limitations of Melvyl, and about Calcat. He was very appreciative!
• Former student doing an internship for [Politics faculty], researching mayors who are notable or “heroes”—Academic Search Complete, newspapers, how UC-eLinks works, ILL process, Cruzcat -- subject headings "mayors", Dictionary of National Biography, Gale Biographies database, ref book: Biographical Dictionary Of American Mayors, 1820-1980
• Staff member looking for FCC decision concerning wireless signal boosters > found public notices and comments in FCC Electronic Comment Filing System, eventually determined from listed proceedings that FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau had jurisdiction in matter, went to their separate site and found Headlines Archive lists all official public notices, news releases, and orders/decisions > determined no decision has yet been made in the case of signal boosters (as comment is still being collected)
• Researcher from UCSF called to verify a citation from Source: Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol & Addictive Behavior. We have title electronically, and in print. Almost needed to use the print because the title search didn't return results. Determined there was a slight title change from what the researcher had vs. the title in the source.
• Advice on appropriate use, according to Chicago Manual of Style, of footnotes v. bibliography v. in-text notes v. reference list

Gifts and donations

This is a review of how we handle gifts at both library buildings.

Maps and Special Collections accept and process gifts, and gift forms, themselves.

Paul Machlis is the gift coordinator for all other materials. What this means is that staff should refer all questions about possible donations to Paul; he will talk to the person and determine whether we accept the gift or, if not, what other options are available.

The exception is when a patron comes to a service desk with a gift in hand, usually just a few volumes. In this case:

1. You are welcome to accept their gift, which you will pass on to Paul.
2. Please offer them a "Letter of Gift" form to complete, which you will also pass on to Paul. The donor is not required to complete the Letter of Gift form, but must do so if they wish formal acknowledgment which comes from both the Library Office and Campus Gifts Administration.
3. If you do accept such a gift and the donor asks if we will definitely add the item to the collection or if not, can we return the item to them, the answer in both cases is "no." Items that are not needed in our collection are disposed of in various ways.

Access and Reference at both buildings will be replacing old forms with the new form (the McHenry Ref Desk keep them in a drawer beside the Vertical File drawer).

The information regarding codes at the bottom only concerns Paul, Special Collections, and Maps. When he receives a completed gift form, he will complete those sections.

If you have additional questions, they are probably answered at the page below. You are also welcome to contact Paul anytime regarding gifts and our gift policy (9-3540, machlis@ucsc.edu).

http://library.ucsc.edu/giving/donate-a-collection

Emailing docs to visually-impaired student

Just in case Christian (the blind student with the seeing-eye dog) returns for more help, the following may be helpful. His computer can't read aloud from PDFs, so he needs text copied and pasted into a word doc. I found that when I click PDF full text in ACS, I can't highlight/copy but if I click "download PDF" (bottom left) and open in Acrobat, I can do this, and then paste into word. It is also important to make sure that the pasted article includes the citation information -- in one case it did not, so I grabbed that and added it to the word doc. He is also OK with a link to an HTML text, so when HTML is available that may be more convenient, although I ended up pasting most of the articles into word regardless. Paul

Reference Service - 6/14 to 6/18

Hello Ref Deskers,

I wanted to share a temporary change in reference service for the week of June 14-18th. I'm sending this message to you because you typically work on the Reference desk during the summer. If I have neglected to include anyone on this list, please let me know.

During the week of June 14-18, the week between Finals and Summer Session, Reference desk assistance provided at both McH and S&E libraries will be shifted to the Access desk. This temporary change is to allow Access Services to deploy their staff to shelf-reading and shelving in the stacks. Reference hours starting this week are 1p-5p, and again, you would work your regular reference shift(s) at the Access desk.

This means that we will provide very basic circulation assistance as well as research assistance at the Circulation desk. Access services staff will provide training, and an access staff person (most likely Molly) and a student will be available as back-up.

I understand you undoubtedly have questions about this, so I have scheduled the McH instruction room for a half-hour meeting tomorrow, Friday the 14th, from 9:30-10am. I hope to see you there.

thank you,

Lucia

New incident form

Dear Library Staff,

In order to make the library incident report form more stable and secure, we've moved it from the old library web server to the staff Drupal server. The new url is http://staff.library.ucsc.edu/node/add/incident-report but a redirect is in place, so you will be forwarded to the new form from the old link. It looks a little different but the information is the same as the old form.

You do need to login with your library server username and password in order to see the form. This is the same login and password used on the Edgar filesharing server and the main library webserver. If you do not to know your Edgar login, please contact IT help (at http://itrequest.ucsc.edu) and they will reset your password.

Please contact me with questions.

-- Sue Perry (for the Web Implementation Team)

Light out log (not about sleeping in the library...)

The campus electrician has asked us to track when the lights go out,
where if occurs, and when they come back on again. Laura has made a
log at the Reference desk to track this.

I understand they suspect it may be a problem with the programming,
and they need our help to pinpoint the problem.

If the lights go out on another floor - i.e. NOT the second floor,
you can call the Ref desk to report the problem. Please understand
it is midterms, so we may not be able to answer the phone right
away. You may also email me directly (include date, time, place,
duration, etc.) and I will add it to the log.

thank you,

Lucia

16th-century engravings

Students in Allan Langdale's HAVC 137E Renaissance Prints class will be researching a mystery engraving from 16th-century Germany. BR kindly informs us that they should consult the Illustrated Bartsch (http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b1431168~S5), volume 10 of which is entitled Sixteenth-century German Artists.

Additional info from Lee:

"That helps. I had a student who insisted the engraving was Bosch, and when that didn't pan out, noticed "Barsch" somewhere on the page, but that name drew a blank as well. I pointed her to some texts about early engravers and suggested the VRC if that didn't work."

Right desk Mac screen tilting problem

The ergonomic arm on the right desk Mac seems to have a missing bolt or screw that allows us to tilt it backward and forward as we need to. A call is in to Jerry to see if he can fix it for us.
It does seem to be working at the moment if you gently tilt it back away from you. But if it starts to tilt forward, it falls all the way and is unusable.

Thanks for your patience while we have it repaired. In the meantime, if you are uncomfortale using it until it's fixed, use the center computer on the back table or the left desk Mac.

Thanks,

Laura